Crazy Love, Written by Sarah Taylor Ryckman

I hope you guys don't mind me filling in for Stephanie this week.  She’s been working tirelessly for so long that she is well overdue for a break. Plus, this gives me an opportunity to tell a slightly different story. Don’t get me wrong, this one has the same characters, plot, setting, conflict, and resolution, but the point of view and theme are a little different. Be prepared to experience the sappiest and least sarcastic version of me ever recorded.

Since we are going to be spending the about 3-5 minutes together, I thought it would be appropriate to tell you all a little secret about me...I am a true romantic.  Before you roll your eyes, let me explain.  You know in the movies when a group of women are standing together in the office when all of a sudden some random guy walks in and holding a bouquet of flowers and says “Delivery for Miss Smith”, and then the woman reads the cheesiest card ever as all of her friends standing around say, in unison, “aww...he is so romantic”? That is not me and it’s not how I view romance. That’s not even the bullshit version of romance.  

Now might also be a good time for me to mention that I view love differently than most.  Instead of spending way too long giving a really boring explanation of how everyone else views love, followed by an equally thrilling description of my take on it, it might be better to express the difference in story form.

The current cultural expectation of love is quite easy, predictable, and boring. It goes something like this: Boy meets girl (I told you it was predictable, right?). The second they see each other they fall madly in love (boring), and live happily ever after (easy). There is no effort, no hard times, no moments where you pretend to have an important work meeting just so you can get out of the house for a few extra hours. 

The second story is a bit different. Girl meets girl, and like any other casual meeting there are no sparks or little red shaped hearts filling the voids of their minds.  In fact, almost 6 months go by before they even see each other again. Another two years will pass before they join forces as roommates in order to stay in this total shithole of a house that is way overpriced but is close to where they work and has a fenced in backyard for their dogs.

It didn’t take long for the attraction to kick in, but once it kicked in they were goners. Head over heels for each other.  So they did what every normal couple does-they had a shotgun wedding in Michigan during the 12 hours it was legal before the supreme court told the country that denying same sex couples the right to marry was ridiculous because anyone who has ever been married knows it is always the same sex.

After they get married, they settle down, buy a house, and start a family of the four legged variety of course, because well, bees. To be perfectly honest, I am not sure which animal correlates to which gender in that whole sex talk scenario but it’s not really important. What matters is that they met, fell in love, got married, bought a house, and had a cute but very hairy family.  Then one day, one of them comes home from work and finds the other curled into the fetal position on the bed and silently crying. When asked what was wrong she heard, “I don’t know, I just needed to cry”.

Like everyone else who has never experienced the spontaneous need to cry, she slowly walked backwards out of the room. This is where love really comes into the picture.  You see before this Me, Myself, and Irene moment, this was pretty close to the fairy-tale ending of happily ever after (with the exception of the one time that one of them said the wrong thing at a dinner party). Most people who believe in the fairy tale version of love would have bolted out of that room faster than you can say divorce. But how meaningful is love if it is always easy? Think about it like this, would you rather have someone bring you store bought cookies or homemade cookies?

Sure, sometimes my wife is like a real life reenactment of every character in Winnie The Pooh. But the moral of this story is that love is hard sometimes, and when it is the hardest is when it is the most important and the most meaningful.